Rs 15 lakh robbery in Sindri jewellery shops

A broken iron chest and items lie scattered around one of the Dhanbad shops where the burglary took place on Wednesday. Picture by Gautam Dey

A gang of robbers broke into three jewellery shops in Sindri Main Market late on Tuesday night and decamped with gold and silver ornaments worth more than Rs 15 lakh.

Sources said all the three shops where the burglars struck were interconnected from inside and operated under the name of Shri Vishnu Plaza in Sindri around 35km from Dhanbad.

Police sources also revealed that the burglary might have taken place between Tuesday midnight and 3am on Wednesday.

Police said the gang had meticulously planned the operation and had a good knowledge of the interiors of the shops. They damaged three CCTV cameras inside the shops and took away three monitors that had been installed to receive feeds.

The robbers used gas cutters to break open the locks of the safes, the police said. They also, in order to fool a private night guard on patrol duty in the market area, shut and locked up the main gate of the shop from the outside as they cleaned out the safes.

The incident came to light on Wednesday morning, when proprietor Mukesh Verma reached his shop and found the locks broken. On closer inspection, he also found a number of gold and silver ornaments missing, prompting him to raise an alarm. Verma said he had locked his shop around 9pm and left for home as per norm. The market usually stays open till late, with some small eateries staying open till 11pm.

The proprietor later lodged a complaint with Sindri police who sent a team over for investigations.

Speaking to reporters later, Sindri police station in-charge M.K. Singh said the robbers had only taken genuine gold ornaments and jewels and had not touched the imitation jewels. ďWe think it is the work of an insider. We have launched a probe and all the six employees of the shop will be interrogated one by one,Ē Singh said.

Prodded about the ornaments that were taken, the police officer said the robbers cleaned out precious stones like ruby, diamonds, white and yellow sapphires.